A Spring-Mass-Damper-Based Platooning Logic for Automated Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a physics-inspired control model for vehicle platooning that improves safety and throughput in traffic simulations, demonstrating significant efficiency gains with increased AV market penetration.

Contribution

It applies a Spring-Mass-Damper model to vehicle platooning, reflecting real-world constraints and enhancing safety and throughput in traffic simulations.

Findings

The SMD model prevents negative spacing errors during harsh deceleration.

It achieves a 10-63% increase in maximum throughput depending on AV market penetration.

Travel times are reduced by up to 20% in simulation scenarios.

Abstract

This paper applies a classical physics-based model to control platooning AVs in a commercial traffic simulation software. In Spring-Mass-Damper model, each vehicle is assumed as a mass coupled with its preceding vehicle with a spring and a damper: the spring constant and damper coefficient control spacing and speed adoption between vehicles. Limitations on platooning-oriented communication range and number of vehicles in each platoon are applied to the model to reflect real-world circumstances and avoid overlengthened platoons. The SMD model control both intra-platoon and inter-platoon interactions. Initial evaluation of the model reveals that the SMD model does not cause a negative spacing error between AVs in a harsh deceleration scenario, guaranteeing safety. Besides that, the SMD model produces a smaller positive average spacing error than VISSIM built-in platooning module, which prevents maximum throughput drop. The simulation result for a regular highway section reveals that the proposed platooning algorithm increases the maximum throughput by 10%, 29%, and 63% under 10%, 50%, and full market penetration rate of AVs with 0.5 sec response time. A merging section with different volume combinations on the main section and merging section and different market penetration rates of AVs is also modeled to test inter-platoon spacing policy effectiveness in accommodating merging vehicles. Travel time reductions of 20% and 4% are gained under low MPR of AVs on the mainlane and merging lane accordingly. Meanwhile, a more noticeable travel time reduction is observed in both mainline and merging lanes and under all volume combinations in higher AVs' MPR.